Sexual intercourse is starting earlier than before among Italian adolescents, whose behaviour is converging towards the norms of their European peers. As noted by Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna and Daniele Vignoli, this precocity and the growing importance attached to romantic love are not affected by either the intense material and symbolic exchanges with parents or the increasingly delayed transition to adulthood.
Recent studies comparing different aspects of youth sexuality between countries and over time are relatively rare. In Italy, for instance, the latest national research based on a large statistical sample dates back to Barbagli et al.
In , a questionnaire was administered to 8, economics and statistics undergraduates, born around , at 28 Italian universities. SELFY replicates an identical survey, Sexuality of Italian Students SIS , conducted in , in which 5, economics and statistics students born around self-completed the same closed-ended questionnaire during an hour of class time. The main findings are presented in a recent publication Dalla Zuanna and Vignoli , and summarized below. Sex is more important in the lives of millennials than it was among their parents and older siblings, and the emotional experiences of adolescents have become sexualized.
For half of the students in all Italian regions, first sexual intercourse takes place before their 18 th birthday, one or two years earlier than their parents, and only a small fraction of students are still virgins on their 21 st birthday.
The frequency of sexual intercourse has also increased. Discussing sex with friends and exchanging explicit erotic images via smartphone or computer is more common, and fewer young people consider virginity and chastity to be important values.
